Human Cloning – A New Age Mirror

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive, who is youer than you!”

Great quote, isn’t it? Well, Dr. Seuss after all authored many amazing books for children, he was ought to implant the seeds of uniqueness in the naïve minded lads and lasses. Then, how could he possibly know that his theory of uniqueness was destined to change in few years? …the concept of Human Cloning was not born yet.

Yes, today hardly there is anyone, who hasn’t heard of this surreal concept. There is a tremendous curiosity surrounding this process and comparatively a lot less information. Then what Human Cloning really is?

In simple terms it is creating a genetically identical copy of a human… similar to the identical twins, just a lot more identical. It must not be confused with multiple births stemmed from a single zygote, since multiple births is a completely natural phenomenon that we have no control over, and on the other hand cloning is a definite intentional experiment that is aimed at “creating” another human being in a controlled clinical atmosphere.

You must remember “Jurassic Park”. Of course, how can one forget that wonderful movie? Jurassic Park dealt with this concept in a manner that was pretty close to the actual mechanism of Human Cloning. In the movie it is shown that DNA of dinosaurs was discovered in the body of an insect (who had bitten the dinosaur to drink its blood) that was preserved in a prehistoric fossilized tree resin. Using this DNA they clone a whole flock of dinosaurs that eventually brings an overwhelming disaster on the protagonists and three Oscars to the movie.

Anyway, talking of cloning, there are three types of Human Cloning, Therapeutic Cloning, Reproductive Cloning, and Replacement Cloning.

Therapeutic cloning refers to cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine; Reproductive Cloning is making an identical copy of a human; whereas Replacement Cloning is a combination of both. Replacement Cloning is just a theory and has not been materialized yet, but the first two techniques are pretty much ready for the actual implementation. As a matter of fact, Therapeutic Cloning has already become an active area of research. However, Reproductive Cloning is subjected to many controversies.

There’re many ethical issues regarding the Human Cloning. Most of these issues are religious in origin; however more secular and scientific objections have also been raised to question the workability of it. Whereas religious objection is more concerned with human playing god and interfering in the natural course, the scientific objection claims that cloned individuals will turn out to be biologically damaged, due to the inherent unreliability of their origin. In other words, the opponents predict that this process is going to create a lot of dead or dying babies.

UNESCO’s human-rights declaration asserts that Human Cloning is an asexual mode of reproduction, which might distort generation lines, family relationships, and will put serious constraints over genetic diversity that makes each human unique.

Whatever the case may be, proponents and opponents, both are adamant on their respective takes on the process, and it would be interesting to know how this issue turns out in the coming years.